


No Matter The Distance

by QuickSilverFox3



Series: Mag7 Summer Swagbag Challenge [13]
Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, But they get better, Gen, Inspired by The Old Guard, M/M, Minor Character Death, Non-Binary Joshua Faraday, POV Goodnight Robicheaux, Pining, Platonic Male/Male Relationships, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:00:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25311982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuickSilverFox3/pseuds/QuickSilverFox3
Summary: Goodnight dreams of one immortal in particular, and yet he has never met them despite his search spanning centuries.-Goodnight pressed a hand into his eyes — sending stars and abstract shapes across his visions, grit beneath his fingers — as he scrabbled blindly at the bedside table. His fingers knocked into his gun first, tapping against the glass — empty now but it previously contained fine whiskey and then very cheap vodka — before finally closing around the small burner phone Red had pressed insistently into his hands before he boarded the plane and left them.
Relationships: Goodnight Robicheaux & Billy Rocks, Joshua Faraday/Goodnight Robicheaux, Red Harvest & Goodnight Robicheaux
Series: Mag7 Summer Swagbag Challenge [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1789006
Comments: 11
Kudos: 13
Collections: Mag7 Summer Swagbag Challenge





	No Matter The Distance

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Mag7 Summer Swagbag July Theme prompt: ‘Surrender’.

Goodnight woke, choking on the acrid taste of blood in his mouth, pain lancing through his head like a fresh wound. He could already feel the ghost of it healing, skin knitting back together with a dull ache that seemed to stretch on forever. The hangover, however, was entirely his own.

He scanned the small hotel room with a soldier's eye — passing over the small rickety bedside table, the wardrobe with doors propped open by a set of carefully placed boots, and the curtains crookedly drawn to allow morning sunlight to spill across his face — and groaned, folding back into the mess of pillows. His mouth was as dry as a desert, compulsively swallowing against the acrid tang of bile lingering in the hollow of his throat. 

Goodnight pressed a hand into his eyes — sending stars and abstract shapes across his visions, grit beneath his fingers — as he scrabbled blindly at the bedside table. His fingers knocked into his gun first, tapping against the glass — empty now but it previously contained fine whiskey and then very cheap vodka — before finally closing around the small burner phone Red had pressed insistently into his hands before he boarded the plane and left them.

It was only a temporary absence, and yet he felt the distance between them and himself keenly, the threads that bound them together stretched taught. 

Goodnight squinted at the phone screen, as even that small action sent stabs of pain through his head. He could heal from anything, come back from even death itself, and still had to suffer with a hangover. With a single finger, bleary eyed, Goodnight carefully stabbed out a message to the others, sending it away into the ether.

‘ _ I dreamt about him again. _ ’  _ -G _

He didn’t know what mechanism Red had set up — even contemplating the words set Goodnight’s head aching anew, stomach rolling as if he was on a ship, bed seeming to shift beneath him — but he trusted the other. The irony that Red was, as close as they could work out, of a similar age to himself wasn’t lost on him, but that was a line of thought for a different day as the phone buzzed in his hand.

‘ _ Any luck in finding him?’ -B _

‘ _ Oooooh ur in lurvvvvv.’ -V _

_ ‘Vasquez. Thin ice.’ -R _

‘ _ Besarme el culo.’ -V _

Goodnight laughed weakly, his headache beginning to recede slightly. He shoved at the pillows behind him, half-reclining like an emperor of old — those had been glorious days, the wine strong as he fought in the arena and Billy and Sam beautiful and deadly in his dreams — and scratched at the growth of hair across his cheeks, before replying.

‘ _ No. I still can’t pin them down.’ -G _

The man was mystery, a millennia in the making. They dreamt of each other before they met, in the time following their first death. Goodnight went to his first death willingly, beaten copper cold around his wrists, snow burning his bared skin and hunger gnawing at his stomach, all to appease his gods.

He woke up, choking on grave dirt with images of deaths that weren’t his in front of his eyes.

Billy died countless years ago in a time before time as a bronze dagger cut his throat, and carried it with him as he wandered, crossing the earth in his search for men he only saw in his dreams.

Sam drowned, and drowned and drowned before he managed to escape from the river that held him close, emerging onto a world that had forgotten who he was.

  
  


Horne died during the Crusades, pledging his life to a cause he was slowly losing faith in with every broken body he saw. He woke in a pile of corpses and ran, ran as far away as he could.

Vasquez died for a drunken bet in the 18th century, waking up in a pool of his own blood and a splitting headache that he maintained was the worst he had ever felt, even in the years that followed.

Red had been hard to find, separated from them by an ocean and an age, dying first in the middle of a battle that still woke him, cry caught in his throat and rearing back to strike, his deaths haunting them for years until they could finally cross the ocean and meet.

Goodnight could find them all, and yet this immortal… They had eluded him for almost a millennia. He knew the curve of their jaw — longed to bite it just to see their pale skin bruise and purple — he knew their smile from memory, had drawn it countless times on any scrap of paper he had to hand when his mind wandered. He knew how their hair darkened in the winter to a coppery brass and lightened to a gold that reminded him of wheat in the summer. He felt each of their deaths as keenly as his own.

Goodnight dreamed and his stomach twisted with hunger deeper than he had ever known before as the other died and died and died again, stomach empty and bones pressing against their skin like knives. Goodnight dreamed and saw the flashes of cannon fire changing to muzzle fire and then to pistol and felt each bullet rip into him. Goodnight dreamed and felt the needles pierce his skin, head spinning until finally darkness claimed them, it only for a moment when everything stopped and they could sleep in silence.

He searched continents and found nothing. 

‘ _ I’m going to stop looking. I’ll finish this job, and I’ll stop.’ -G _

Typing the words was a release, the final surrender of this burden he carried. Billy knew him best, could read him with a glance, but even he couldn’t understand Goodnight’s fascination with their missing seventh.

‘ _ Okay.’ -B _

Goodnight stumbled as he stood, a dull ringing in his ears, reflexively tucking the gun into his waistband. His bare feet knocked against bottles as he moved towards the bathroom and he took a moment to check there wasn’t any broken glass before continuing. The water was cold, a blessed relief on his heated skin even as goosebumps prickled down his arms, old memories of drowning pressing uncomfortably close to the surface.

A simple job. Flash a smile, pay for some fake IDs — thank every god he had ever prayed to that Vasquez hadn’t been allowed to pick their names this time — and return to the hotel room to drink himself into a happy oblivion before returning to the others. 

When Goodnight finally emerged from his hotel room, the sun was high in the sky, bright and blazing in a rare show of good weather. He winced behind his sunglasses, hand pressed to his temple, dull pressure to combat stabbing pain, and began to walk. This wasn’t a new contact — they had conducted business before, or rather Red had — but he had never met them in person. 

Goodnight ducked his head as he moved, catching sight of every security camera, every mobile phone, all watching him like insectile eyes. He fancied he could feel them watching him, skin crawling with the weight of a thousand eyes. He pulled his coat tighter around his shoulders, and walked faster. 

The bell above the door rang out merrily into the silence of the crowded antique shop, the sound swallowed up by the press of items on all sides, towering stacks almost brushing the ceiling. Goodnight paused, considering them carefully before he moved into the shop — old memories of crushing injuries, courtesy of Vasquez, tangled in his thoughts. 

“Hello?”

Goodnight moved deeper into the shop, scanning the aisle with quick, efficient motions, cataloguing everything as he passed — a globe missing the entirety of America (a replica, artificially aged}; a heavy fur coat dust clinging to the silk lining; rows and rows of books, ranging from water damaged and weather worn to almost brand new, the spines still intact. 

The click of a gun was a sound Goodnight knew intimately, and he had turned, his own weapon raised before he realised what was happening. 

Familiar blue eyes — eyes he had never seen except in his dreams, ringed with kohl or red-rimmed and furious — met his, purple painted lips curved into that familiar mocking smile. Goodnight’s heart fluttered in his chest, mind painfully blank. He had thought of this moment for so long and now it was here, and he was helpless. Centuries of searching, and he had found them when he had given up.

“Good to know I’m not completely crazy,” they said, gun levelled at Goodnight’s chest in steady hands. He noticed that the polish was chipped, flecks still clinging to the edges of the other’s front teeth, the habit of a lifetime was difficult to break. 

“No,” Goodnight agreed, slowly holstering his gun, showing them his hands in surrender. “Goodnight’s my name and you mind telling me yours, cher? I’ve — we’ve — been looking for you for so long now.”

The other immortal’s grin only widened, and Goodnight fell in love immediately and without hesitation.

“Faraday. And I am sorry about this.”

The bullet ripping into his chest came almost as a surprise, stumbling at the impact as the familiar taste of iron crawled up his throat. Goodnight died on the floor of an antique shop, and when he awoke, he was alone once more, a small envelope of IDs resting beneath one hand, and a phone number written on his palm in bright blue ink.

**Author's Note:**

> [ My Tumblr!](https://inkformyblood.tumblr.com) Requests are always welcome!  
> 


End file.
